Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday July 08, 2010 @11:12AM
from the baron-harkonnen-approved dept.

DrFrasierCrane writes "You think you feel weighed down when your dentist lays that lead apron on you to take X-rays: how about the doctors who deal with radiation treatments and have to wear those aprons all day long? A Dallas, Texas, doctor has created a 'zero gravity' radiation suit for just that problem. From the article: 'Physicians are supposed to wear a lead apron during those procedures. It is back-breakingly heavy and doesn't cover the body completely. The zero gravity suit eliminates the weight and the exposed openings.'"

No, he is just passing the inertial momentum to another universe, with slightly different universe constants, and thus, making perpetum mobile. The question is, is there some other universe that is using our universe as a inertium garbage bin???

RTFA. Nothing so high-tech. The suit is just suspended from the ceiling so that the wearer is not burdened by all the extra weight. It's effective weight is zero, although its mass (obviously) is not, just like in zero G.

Any circumstance under which you can effective give objects no weight is, for most purposes, considered to be zero gravity or microgravity, even if gravity is still actually present. For example, creating a weightless environment in an airplane doing a fast dive from a high altitude.

It would be more correct to call it a weightless suit than a zero gravity suit, but then it might not get as much attention.

This is not an attempt to redefine natural laws, it's just using commonly understood terms to con

I fail to see how "Zero Gravity radiation suit" is easier than "weightless radiation suit". One conveys what the product actually accomplishes and the other is useless dribble to catch a nice headline. The device does not effect gravity nor the wearers perception of it. That person still feel the gravity from earth pulling them to the floor. Marketing antics are not the same as making it easier for people to understand.

Except that nobody actually does misunderstand it. People here seem to actively be _choosing_ to assume that there is some sort of deliberate attempt here to misguide the public when the only people who seem to be having problems with the terminology are people who already know enough to not misunderstand it in the first place.

Eventually, the thing may have a disclaimer saying that it does not actually create a zero gravity environment, but that's an issue for lawyers to hammer out later, should it ever

Yes... *LIKE* a zero-gravity environment. It's not unheard of, you know, to use a phrase that conveys a particular concept as a metaphor for what it does, even if at the most technical level, that is not what it actually accomplishes.

You should have RTFA. This guy invented "hang it on a hook". No, really - that's the trick. You build a nice, heavy lead shield curtain and then you hang it from the ceiling to hold the weight. I guess if you don't have a handy ceiling mount (maybe you need a portable X-ray?) you could invent a wheeled gantry to carry it around with you. Anti-gravity would come under the category of "marketing hyperbole".

This will be good for doing angios, etc, where they just stand around and watch - which is good, 'cause they just hit the fluoro pedal, and the radiation stream is constant. For stuff like orthopaedics (my specialty), we usually just use spot images, and have to move around a lot, twist the patients legs, reduce fractures, etc, This suit is way too bulky, and wont be useful

Not a bad idea - I can see it getting used."zero G" - now that just makes me laugh

Spot images that I'm referring to are by the surgeon, being used to get a trajectory for a screw for instance, and typically they are not shielded, 'cause I have to hold the drill while looking at the x-ray.

It may sound a bit hyped to call it "zero gravity", but in terms of what weight really means, it's actually not an entirely inappropriate term from perspective of the wearer: The wearer can move around in quite massive garb that for him, has no weight.

Neither does sticking something in water affect its mass, but it sure as heck affects its WEIGHT, which is the net force of gravity on an object. In this case, the net force of gravity on the suit placed on the wearer, being fully countered by being suspended from the ceiling, is zero.

Weight is the product of mass and acceleration due to gravity. Putting something in water does not affect either. Reactionary forces do not change weight. Putting something in water may cause it to float due to buoyancy, but its weight does not change. Same goes for this "invention." Its weight is not changed; it is supported by the ceiling instead of the wearer. Gravity is certainly not affected making the title sensationalist.

Did you take grade 9 science? Weight is *NOT* just mg... that's the force on an object due to gravity. That's all it is. Weight is the force that pushes against that from a singe reference point (usually a horizontal surface on which the object rests).

I've invented a time machine that can take you into the future.
You lay on it and close your eyes and when you open them again - pow, you are in the future.
Admittedly it looks just like a bed, but appearances can be deceptive.

"Back-breakingly heavy"? Admittedly, I've never worn the aprons for more than the few minutes that an X-Ray takes, but they're not that heavy. Heck, it could even have some core-strengthening benefits. What about Law Enforcement or Military Personnel who have to wear bullet-proof vests all day long?

The video won't load for me right now, but the thing looks pretty cumbersome to have on you all day long and I'd be interested to see how it is attached (or suspended?) and "follows" you as you move around a

"Back-breakingly heavy"? Admittedly, I've never worn the aprons for more than the few minutes that an X-Ray takes, but they're not that heavy. Heck, it could even have some core-strengthening benefits. What about Law Enforcement or Military Personnel who have to wear bullet-proof vests all day long?

I think the aprons are - much - heavier than bullet-proof vests because aprons contains a crazy amount of lead, which has a high density, whilst bullet-proof vests are made of kevlar, nano tubes or something else which do not have a high density.

Some vests contain trauma plates, in addition to fiber of one sort or another, and those are both heavy and stiff(of course, for exactly this reason, most people who aren't expecting to take any rifle fire on a given day generally skip them).

More broadly, though, military and law enforcement sometimes put up with excessively weighty gear because it's the best of bad alternatives, not because carrying heavy things is morally salubrious. If it were practical for them to have more armor; but carried for the

Doctors are often not as fit as "Law Enforcement or Military Personnel" if you've got a bad back standing around in a lead gown for hours at a time can take quite a toll.

Having said that this seems like the sort of thing that one interventional radiologist will insist on having installed at huge cost to the hospital and it'll get used twice then pushed off into the corner. We've seen this kind of thing before. The last one was nick-named the pope-mobile, it was basically a lead phone box on wheels with ar

You can actually make a radiation shield that lets light pass through it by simply 'impregnating' acrylic with lead? Dangerous radiation is higher in frequency then normal light but is it really possible to block the one and not the other? I don't have a great understanding of how waves behave in the environment, but this stuck out as odd to me.

You can actually make a radiation shield that lets light pass through it by simply 'impregnating' acrylic with lead?

Yes. Such barrier materials are widely commercially available, for exactly this sort of purpose: here's the first hit I found [supertechx-ray.com]. The material is usually horrifically expensive, but that's true of virtually any special-purpose material with scientific or medical applications. Leaded glass is also often used in radiology suites.

Lead is (or at least was) a common dopant for many types of optical glasses used to make lenses, prisms, etc.
Lead content is also one of the things that differentiates "crystal" (the kind in grandma's china cabinet) from glass. One way to tell if the stuff from grandma is real is to take it home in your carry on luggage. if it is really crystal, TSA will likely make you open the bag for visual inspection because the crystal is opaque to their Xray scanners.

A few years ago, we all would have been reading this thread through just such a material. A few of us may still be.

The reason that CRTs were made of leaded glass was to protect the user from the X-rays one can generate by firing three 40 kilovolt electron guns through a vacuum and into their face. Those let the visible light through just fine, and largely protected users from eyeball cancer.

Sounds like the boys from NASA should get hold of this technology, since the guys in long term space are being bombarded on a regular basis. It might cut some of the current suits mass down, or give the mass over to particle stopping material, instead of radition protection. Even in the ISS, the exposure rate must be high.